Best Annual Festival

Fourth Avenue Street Fair

Readers Pick

Circa 1984: A young future Tucson Weekly contributor is
wandering the Fourth Avenue Street Fair with her parents, and sees a
dude with dreadlocks past his midsection, no shirt, no shoes and very
threadbare shorts, staring intently at the sky. She stops and stares.
"The Street Fair is when all of the hippies come out," her parents tell
her, and for years, she believes that hippies only leave their
homes twice a year to attend the Fourth Avenue Street Fair. Only a
festival as eclectic and zany as the Street Fair would lead a small
child to believe that is the only time of year certain people feel the
warmth of the Tucson sun. This December's festival will be the first to
celebrate a new, hipper, more modern Fourth Avenue underpass, and
here's hoping the festival will continue to be wild enough to trick new
generations of wide-eyed kiddies into believing that hippies only leave
their houses twice a year.